SAP S/4HANA Reviews

I have implemented many different versions of SAP S/4HANA (since 1511) with the latest version being S/4HANA 2021

Led Transformation Projects covering core processes such as P2P, O2C, R2R, A2R, D2O,H2R, etc.

SAP S4HANA could improve by having a more seamless easier integration, faster integration. The overall implementation timelines can be reduced by leveraging Agile methodology

I have been implementing SAP S4HANA for more than a decade now

SAP S4HANA is stable.

S/4HANA offers one of the best scalability options. It is one of the largest ERP solution globally supporting all Industry verticals.

The technical support could be improved.

Positive

None of the large-scale implementations of SAP S4HANA are straightforward. The ecosystem can be made a little better, to drive faster and simpler implementations, and reduce complexity.

I have been a consultant and an integrator, and I have hired and onboarded consultants and integrators. The number of consultants that are needed depends on the project, size, and scope of the project. It could be anywhere as low as seven or eight consultants and the number can increase to as much as 25.

The licensing models for On-Prem as well as Public Cloud versions are based on no. of users charged Annually. Apart from the Licence cost there is a component of approx 20% Annual Maintenance Costs.

Apart from Licensing costs there is a cost of implementation and associated hardware (in case of On Prem)

I rate SAP S4HANA an eight out of ten.

SAP S4HANA is used as an enterprise resource planning solution.

I have been using SAP for more than 13 years and the new SAP S4HANA was not only a simple upgrade, they have made a lot of improvements. They have simplified a lot of the functions, the all-new interface gives users a better experience. The database itself is quite efficient in nature and it provides effective data queries. It is a good upgrade from the previous version of SAP R/3.

I have used SAP S4HANA for approximately two years.

This solution is stable. The application runs on hardware and if you are using cloud architecture it is stable. However, there are too many factors to clearly say this solution is stable because it depends on the environment. For example, where are you hosting the solution and how are you accessing it can impact the stability. If one of these many factors is not suitable then the solution as a whole could be determined to be unstable. 

It is simple to implement SAP S4HANA. If you are already in this type of environment, then the transition is not very complex. However, if you do not then it can be difficult.

It does not matter what ERP you are using, whether it is Oracle, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, or others, and even locally made or customized solutions, it is always the change management that takes all the effort. It is never technology that comes in between as the bottleneck because whatever technology you choose, configure, design architect, it does the job. The issue is the mindset of people, how to change people, how to train them, how do you make them efficient, how they will become more fluent and adapt to this change? That is the challenge, it is never technology that falls in place as a bottleneck.

I have evaluated Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, and other solutions.

When trying to improve, you either implement something new and then try to improve your internal process, or there is a change in business, market, product, or scenario altogether, or maybe a merger equation that you need something which is not there. It is always a gap between the demand and supply and that is the reason the flow happens. Otherwise, if everything is saturated, then it becomes fully stable, there is no need for any movement or change anywhere. 

There has been a lot of changes in businesses recently with COVID, the entire way we do business has changed from the way we used to do business earlier. For example, in a manufacturing company, they could have had everything configured in a certain way, and then suddenly no one was able to attend the offices or building. This pandemic has placed a lot of restrictions and yet you have to manage everything, such as productivity, people, and their time. There have been tremendous changes over the past year and a half. If you look at any supply chain or any transport company, there is a change in requirements, reporting, monitoring, and objective analysis of each and every function. It is a process that is going on that will transform the industry, the outlook, the way of we are going to be working with people. Operations are shifting from a physical presence to remote working and virtually managing. Time, demand, and businesses keep changing, and then the software and different upgrades, functionality, will change too.

I am completely agnostic to any particular solution or vendor. My advice is if you choose SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, or another solution, all of them are equally good. They can be configured and can be customized. There is never a one size fits all solution, you will have to find what solution fits your particular business and use case. One solution might be the best for one type of use case but not work well in another. 

I rate SAP S4HANA an eight out of ten.

All our warehouses are manufactured. We are using it quite extensively. We are on a program that we are doing within the company.

I find the easy transformation and the good app to be very valuable. The computing capabilities are nice, and the analytics are good. The insights given help us make strategic decisions. 

It's been more than three or four years that HANA has started to enable us and has helped make our system more efficient, faster than the traditional ECC that we had, exceeding Cisco.

We are already in touch with SAP, excluding them as inputs. 

I have used the solution for more than three or four years.

SAP has been handling stability. We are doing an upgrade as well.

Scalability is somewhat of an issue.

Technical support is good.

We have used many different solutions.

It is efficient and has been a transformational journey. It's a long journey and a mindset change. 

I would rate the overall product as eight out of ten.

SAP S/4HANA is primarily employed for data analysis and analytics. It involves engaging with data within the platform to perform analytics and generate insights, focusing on optimizing data collection and analysis at the database level.

The ability to optimize performance by allowing both data transactions and analytics on a single platform is particularly valuable. This dual capability enhances the efficiency of data handling and analysis, making it a crucial feature for effective data management.

The platform could improve by simplifying the analytics processes, which currently require significant preparatory work outside the platform. This aspect can be cumbersome and detract from the otherwise streamlined experience.

I would like to see the inclusion of more integrated tools that allow for direct analytics and calculations within the platform itself. This would reduce the need for extensive data preprocessing, which is currently a necessity.

I have been using SAP S/4HANA for six months. 

SAP S/4HANA is highly scalable, particularly due to its model-driven development approach, which allows for efficient data integration and analysis as our needs grow.

The solution's deployment is still in the development phase, and we have yet to go live. Therefore, I have yet to have the opportunity to require or evaluate customer service or support.

Before adopting S/4HANA, I used SAP ECC and Tableau. The switch was driven by the need for more advanced features and the discontinuation of support for the older system.

The deployment is still in the development phase. 

 The solution might be expensive. 

The solution might be expensive, an important consideration for any organization looking to adopt it.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

Customers reach out to me when they have challenges related to licensing and contracting costs associated with it.  

Customer choose this solution because they want to transition away from Oracle or because they are compelled to go for SAP.

Oracle has its own data center, hardware, virtualization layer, and database. They offer a complete solution, which SAP currently can't match. This is a weak point in SAP's proposition.

I have been using this solution for the last 20 years.

It is a stable solution. 

It is a very scalable solution. We have enterprise-level businesses using this solution. 

The customer service and support are average. There is room for improvement in response time. 

Neutral

It is easy to install. Our clients deploy it on the cloud or on-premises.

It's quite expensive. However, it can be expensive to maintain the solution. 

The licensing varies because I serve multiple customers, and there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. There are additional costs for technical support and consulting

I have a background in Oracle, I'm making a few comparisons between Oracle and SAP. I fully understand SAP's strategy to move their customers to S/4HANA. However, when we consider the developments in ERP suites in the cloud, especially Oracle's approach compared to SAP's,  I lean more towards Oracle from a solution perspective. Oracle provides a native cloud solution that integrates everything seamlessly. 

On the other hand, SAP, especially if you're using the right solution, essentially involves deploying older on-premises SAP software on a hyperscaler, which we refer to as a "cloudified" solution. This, in my opinion, isn't as strong in the overall proposition.

I would recommend thoroughly evaluating other options and ensuring a clear understanding of the associated risks and costs before making a decision.

Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten because there is always room for improvement and SAP lacks a native cloud solution.

SAP S4HANA is used as a complete resource planning solution for our organization.

The solution is flexible, has a lot of functionality, and has the ability to deliver more security than other comparable solutions.

SAP S4HANA is not suitable for all-size companies. If you have a small company there are better fit solutions for your needs.

I have been using SAP S4HANA for approximately five months.

We have found that SAP S4HANA is more reliable and stable than other solutions, such as ECC.

The solution is scalable.

The technical support is very good. We have generated support tickets, and they have provided helpful advice and solutions to our problems in a timely manner.

I have used many other solutions, such as ECC and Business One.

The installation and cloud configuration was straightforward.

We had some issues with the installation of the solution. The implementation partner we were using was in India and they could not travel to where we are in Saudi Arabia because of the Covid-19 pandemic making resolutions difficult. Additionally, the communication was difficult. However, this was not the fault of SAP S4HANA.

We used the S/4HANA implementation team to do the full implementation.

There is a license required for the use of this solution and we are on a monthly subscription. The cost of the solution is expensive compared to other solutions. 

I would recommend this solution to others. However, they have to make sure it is the right fit for their environment. If they have a small company that has approximately 200 to 300 users then this solution is not the best for them, SAP Business One would be the better choice for their whole business cycle. S/4HANA is for larger-scale companies with more users.

I rate SAP S4HANA an eight out of ten.

The tool is like a spinning desk mechanism where a lot of data comes from multiple sources of multiple applications using a kind of main single source or an index from a single source through a system of record. For multiple applications holding all their data that pertains to a certain piece of data that is housed in a different application database over here, SAP S/4HANA builds models to basically collect all that information and figure out how to build reports out of each of the applications based on their datasets with a key from one of the datasets. If I have a transaction, but my transaction originates in the system over here, and the system has a lot more information, then the transaction makes its way into our system of record, after which it pulls data from the system of record, but it also pulls information from the other system to get more context to the application.

The most critical feature of the product for my company's operations would be the conglomerate business modeling which is good. I think the clients I work with are very concerned about their own data and the data of others, so they do need things in real-time, but they need more context around it and why it is being used, but otherwise, it is just a bunch of numbers.

I think that the cost is a big area of concern, considering what users get out of the tool. I believe there are some tools and even some cloud-based kind of data modeling tools, which once you start putting applications to the cloud and sharing search services in databases, I think that can kind of buy you what SAP used to put together years ago to sell, and it can be helpful for the power of what you are trying to do with it. In our company, I don't think we are building models constantly, like the real-time decision-making AI models right now with the current tool. In our company, I don't think we will ever be able to get to the aforementioned point with the use of the tool.

I have experience with SAP S/4HANA.

I have no issues with the stability of the product, as everything seems to be fine.

The product's scalability is very good, but again, I think our company's clients don't use it for what it is made for, specifically in terms of its cost. I think it is a more powerful tool than our company's clients need.

For support purposes, my company used to approach the main vendor of the product who helped us with the implementation part.

I work more on the functional side, consisting of reports in Power BI.

In terms of the product's initial setup process, I would say that my company is in a very unique situation with our clients. The product's initial setup process is pretty difficult to handle. On a scale of one to ten, where ten means it was easy, I rate the setup phase a three.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution deployment took a few months because only a few experts knew how to do it. A lot of people were involved in getting the information ready and requirements done, but only a few experts could manage it.

The product is expensive. On a scale of one to ten, one being the lowest price and ten being the highest, I rate the product price as seven or eight.

A few of the products that my company uses are from SAP. My company mostly prefers an application-based or platform-based environment, so we are not on a single source platform. I think we are moving to Azure's cloud services, which will help enable our company to use some of the aforementioned areas. My company uses some NetApp tools to help with our data integration needs, especially since our systems are integrated. There are some API integrations with various applications that we use in our company.

There are some people in our company who deal with SAP S/4HANA set, and then what they do is they replicate data through the models and then expand that to Microsoft Power Apps and Power BI to create reports for everybody.

The tool must handle a lot of analytics and reporting areas like financial information, location information, and other things to support our company's core business processes.

I think because of the size of the data and some of the network support that my company has had on the tool, I can say that many of it wasn't in real-time. The tool hasn't really lived up to what it needs to be, especially from a cost perspective; it is too much, considering what our company gets out of it.

Migrating to SAP S/4HANA has affected our company's data management and reporting in a positive way. The tool gave better access to the information that can then be either viewed or manipulated externally through a different BI or utility. It did give more flexibility in building models. I think we had old warehouse mechanism information many years ago, so I believe that there is a need to do data mining of old transaction journals, which would take a long time, while SAP S/4HANA definitely has helped to speed up the process and actually regenerate the reports. I think sometimes making changes to the tool has been a problem because certain things that are not are just not built the way you want them to be, and so there can be bad information available inside out. I don't think our other tools feed SAP S/4HANA system to have the data in order to actually make it usable without some intervention.

I rate the tool a six or seven out of ten.

Our company implements the solution for customers. It is used for order management, finance, purchasing, and manufacturing. We currently have two customers using the solution. 

The solution's new UI called Fiori is user friendly.

The solution is very easy to integrate.

The solution is complex technically because both an old and a new path exist. Some more development work is needed for Fiori before a complete switchover can happen. Right now, they are enhancing and developing Fiori. In two to five years, things may change because Fiori will be finished and in the market. 

I have been using the solution for three years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

Technical support could be better so I rate it a five out of ten. 

Neutral

The setup is complex. We were given instructions but setup was not easy. 

We implement the solution for customers. Implementation can take between six months to two years depending on the scope and customer. 

The pricing model is based on an annual license. 

I recommend the solution for big companies because they have a lot of SAP users and can handle the specs of implementation. I do not recommend the solution for mid-sized or small companies because there won't be enough users or support. 

Because two systems are being used within the solution as it iterates over to Fiori, the system is currently very technically complex. A lot of workarounds are needed and this creates a bad experience for customers. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten.